The Choices We Make

Had a fascinating and fun exchange on the Twitters yesterday about these “Ontarians on the Move, 2021 Edition” pieces by Mike Moffatt https://mikepmoffatt.medium.com/.

What was striking about the conservation, was how Toronto centric the conversation was. I know, I know, for my fellow Ontarians this isn’t exactly an unexpected aspect of any Ontario centric conversation. But it’s still worth noting the Toronto centric blinders involved in that discussion.

When conversations about housing and commuting in Ontario start, it’s primarily about the perverse incentives that a lack of affordable housing in and around Toronto are pushing people further away. “Drive until you qualify [for a mortgage]” as Mike puts it. The flip incentive of this is that high paying jobs are centered in Toronto. So, ideally you want to work for an employer that pays you well, and you want to live where you can afford to, to maximize the benefits of that salary. Everyone weighs that value assessment differently, but those are the base motivators.

I commuted from Cambridge to Brampton for 20 years. So this experience was the life I lived. But I did it in reverse. My wife and I moved to Cambridge, and found jobs out of college in the local community. My first job in Kitchener, a 10 minute drive from our apartment, paid barely more than minimum wage. Those were very lean years, and I think the title “working poor” applied to us. But all the local IT jobs available to me at that time (this was before the first tech boom and the first tech crash) were similar in pay scale.

And then I was offered a job at a company in Brampton. With a pay raise to match. In the span of 12 months we went from rolling change to pay for rent to buying a brand new car, and putting a down payment on a house. That’s the difference that salary jump made. So we stayed in Cambridge, and I did the 2–3 hour round trip commute to Brampton for the next 20 years.

We didn’t move to where my GTA area job allowed us to afford a home, my job moved to the GTA to allow us to afford a home where we already were, in our preferred community. My “Drive until you qualify” was done in reverse; I found a job that made my current community affordable.

The point of that experience is that where we want to live, and where we find employment are not necessarily the same thing. Often we compromise one or the other, or both. At the time when we were looking to purchase a home, I thought Brampton prices were too unaffordable (which they were) but I did not want to live in Brampton either. Did I want to spend 2 hours in the car every day? No. Did I want to live in Brampton to avoid that drive? Oh hell no! Over my 20 year career there, most of my co-workers (of all ethnic backgrounds) didn’t want to live in Brampton either. Anyone that did, moved out. To anywhere else. Vaughan, Caledon, Halton, Burlington, Mississauga, Toronto! etc. etc. They’d rather commute than live in that city.

I’m relying on anecdote, but 20 years of anecdote states that people live in Brampton because they need to, not because they want to. (I don’t know if this is particular to Brampton or not, but that experience was illuminating in retrospect.)

So what does this have to do with “Toronto centric blinders?”

The implicit assumption is that all people that work in Toronto, want to work in Toronto, and also want to live in Toronto. Therefore we should buildup and densify to allow that to happen. Don’t build roads to outlying communities. Build more affordable housing inside Toronto.

It’s not that Toronto doesn’t have an affordable housing crisis, it does. But the rest of Ontario also has an employment opportunity crisis. Just because most of the good paying jobs are centered in Toronto doesn’t mean they need to stay there. There are people that do not want to work or live in Toronto. Or the GTA.

Just because we’re forced to, doesn’t mean people want to. Which might explain some of that sprawl in GTA communities as developers try to sell country lifestyle living in the big city. That marketing sells. It might be a lie, but people pay a lot for a lie if it means they feel a little less stress. Even if only for short term relief.

So if we’re going to try to formulate policies that encourage less commuting and more livable communities, we should probably set aside the Toronto centric blinders once in a while. After all, we can’t force people to live where we want them to.